title: Agreement between virtual and in-the-field environmental audits of assisted living sites.
abstract: The authors investigated the use of Google Earth's Street View option to audit the presence of built environment features that support older adults' walking. Two raters conducted virtual (Street View) and in-the-field audits of 48 street segments surrounding urban and suburban assisted living sites in metropolitan Vancouver, BC, Canada. The authors determined agreement using absolute agreement. Their findings indicate that Street View may identify the presence of features that promote older adults' walking, including sidewalks, benches, public washrooms, and destinations. However, Street View may not be as reliable as in-the-field audits to identify details associated with certain items, such as counts of trees or street lights; presence, features, and height of curb cuts; and sidewalk continuity, condition, and slope. Thus, the appropriateness of virtual audits to identify microscale built environment features associated with older adults' walking largely depends on the purpose of the audits-specifically, whether the measurer seeks to capture highly detailed features of the built environment.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
authors.forename: Anna M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Chudyk
authors.forename: Meghan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Winters
authors.forename: Erin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gorman
authors.forename: Heather A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: McKay
authors.forename: Maureen C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Ashe
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D040561:Assisted Living Facilities / Q000592:standards*; D001955:British Columbia; D003660:Decision Support Systems, Management; D004779:Environment Design; D040362:Geographic Information Systems; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008330:Management Audit / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D014584:User-Computer Interface